


Girl Firsts

by scarredsodeep



Series: Girl Out Boy [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Bisexuality, Bisexuals Exist!, Canon Compliant, F/F, Fall Out Girl, Femslash, Femslash February, First Time, Firsts, Fluff, Gen, Genderbending, Girls Kissing, Humor, Lesbian Character, Menstruation, More science jokes than you might expect, Nonbinary Character, Oral Sex, Pre-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Tales from 2003, girl out boy, girls helping girls, using the powers of heterosexuality for good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-16 02:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13626330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: In which the Girl Out Boys have first times.





	1. god save our young blood

**Author's Note:**

> **HAPPY FEMSLASH FEBRUARY!** By popular demand, the Girl Out Boys are back for some sweet, fluffy first times! [(with musical accompaniment, of course.)](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/3U6ETXG3JbstftytF6Nghm) I started writing this fic when I was studying for my licensing exam (WHICH I JUST PASSED!!!! so many things to celebrate this month), so there are a truly surprising amount of jokes about science. I hope you like it!
> 
> Read more Girl Out Boy hijinks [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11935626/chapters/26979849).

 

“Can you believe I actually thought they would be _less_ disgusting when they finally got together?” Andy asks wryly, their hands folded behind their head, their gaze on the ceiling of the semi-stranger’s living room they’re crashing in tonight.

Jo, lying beside them, snorts. “Not one of your better predictions, Zoltan.”

From the rusting sleeping bag Pat and then Pete crawled into, there comes another bitten-off moan. Andy rolls their eyes so hard, Jo can see the whites rolling in the dark.

“Balcony?” Jo suggests. They can both hear the unfortunately familiar sound of Pat’s signature panting. “None of us are getting any sleep tonight.”

It’s cold in the night air. Jo huddles closer to Andy, who is wearing their sleeping bag like a shawl. Andy tucks one corner around Jo’s shoulders. They huddle together like Slavic grandmothers and stare out into the night.

The balcony looks out over the parking lot, other squat little apartment buildings, the run-down community pool. On a warmer night, Jo would try to convince Andy to go for a swim. As it is, she just presses closer to her friend, fighting off a shiver.

“At least one of us does not smell great,” Jo remarks. It is their third night crashing on this girl’s floor, and they haven’t showered yet, out of some attempt to be convenient (if rank) houseguests. Things are a bit uneasy with their host: Pete knows her loosely, having once been tattooed by her and then gone down on her, kneeling in the back hallway of the tattoo shop, in Pete’s words _the best kind of filthy_ . From the look on their host’s face when they all showed up, girls and sleeping bags and Pete with her arm casual-possessive around the shoulders of adorable pink-cheeked Pat, she was not fully apprised of the situation when she agreed to this. Jo suspects she thought there’d be three girls on her floor and one girl in her bed. The point is, they’re hoping for another two nights of hospitality while they record more demos, and the sounds coming from Pat’s sleeping bag are _not_ helping. Jo doesn’t want to push their luck by using up hot water, too. It’s way too fucking cold out here to sleep in the van.

Andy sticks their face in Jo’s armpit and inhales before Jo can smack them away. “It’s definitely you,” they decide.

Jo shoves them, but only a little. She wants the body heat. “Like your abuse of Axe body spray is helping the situation any.”

“At least I’m trying!”

They play at naming constellations and wishing on stars for a while, distracting each other from how cold their noses are. They run out of actual constellations pretty quickly, so Andy tells Jo about the Riot Grrl’s Studded Belt and Jo invents a sweeping mythology around the Showerhead Spray Way.

“And here I thought it was the Milky Way,” says Andy.

“For some girls it is!” laughs Jo. “Do you think they’ve found it yet, inside? Because I honestly can’t choose between listening to my best friends climax inside a sleeping bag and dying of hypothermia out here.”

“They say dying of hypothermia is painless.”

“Are they like this at your place all the time?” Jo asks. She watches for shooting stars, enjoys Andy’s warmth and the happy, petty pastime of complaining about her friends.

Andy shakes their head. “At home it’s more like, arguing about movies, leaving half-full soda cans everywhere, feeding each other sushi, a really excessive amount of snuggling.”

“How nice of them to save the orgasms for mixed company, then.”

Andy snorts. “What is Pete Wentz, if not considerate of others?”

“You could even call her generous.”

“From the sound of it? Yes.”

They chortle together on the balcony for a while. It is the nicest Jo has felt all week. Recording demos is not fun, exactly. Pete and Pat argue all day; Andy lays down their part flawlessly on the first try; and Jo gets increasingly flustered with everyone else’s small slip-ups, because she has high fucking standards and time is literally money in this scenario.

“How about you?” Andy asks after a few chilly minutes of snickering. “Is Mark _generous_?”

Jo shifts from foot to foot, almost as if she’s uncomfortable from the cold. “Ummm,” she says. As ploys to buy time go, this is a transparent one.

Andy elbows her in the ribs. “You don’t _know_ , do you. I thought you were going through, like, bedroom détente with this one?”

“Like, we’ve. Fooled around or whatever.” Jo admits. “But I haven’t…”

“Oh.” Andy’s voice is quiet with surprise. Jo shouldn’t be blushing this hard. At least all the embarrassment is warming her up. “But have you ever?”

“Only by myself.” Jo stares so hard at the covered swimming pool that her eyes start to water. She blinks too fast. There’s something she wants to ask. She can’t believe she wants to ask it. She’s usually fearless. She tries to be fearless tonight.

“It’s just, it’s hard to get that into it? I think the problem is he’s not very good at kissing. Unless it’s--I mean, I worry that--whatifit’smewho’sbadatit.”

“It is categorically impossible for you to be bad at kissing,” Andy says without hesitation. “You’re a girl. Trust me. He’s the problem.”

Jo lets her head rest on Andy’s shoulder. Her friend is so solid. Always has been. She closes her eyes and that makes her braver. “How do you know, though? Without trying.”

“I’m sorry, is Josephine Trohman, prude of worldwide fame and great renown, actually asking me to _kiss_ \--”

“Prude?!” Jo interrupts, her eyes flying open. “If anything, I’m famous for being sensible and like, excessively good at the guitar!”

“Mmmhmm,” Andy agrees, not like they believe it. “If you want to kiss me, Trohman, just say so.”

“It would be for science,” Jo insisted. “Not because I like you.”

“Of course.”

“Because I don’t like you at all. Like, barely even as a friend. You’re hard to tolerate.”

“If this is how you talk to Mark, I’m starting to understand your problem.”

Jo takes a deep breath and fogs the air with her heavy exhale. She turns to her friend, dark-eyed in moonlight, and asks gravely, “Andy Hurley, will you kiss me for science?”

Andy puts a hand over their heart and pretends to swoon. “Only if you promise not to fall in love with--”

Jo’s over it. She swoops in and plants a kiss on Andy’s still-speaking mouth. It’s a mess at first: lips on teeth, the surprised negotiation of at-odds chins. Then Andy’s hand cups Jo’s cheek, gentler than gentle, and their already parted lips melt beneath Jo’s. Warmth seeps through Jo’s skin, like her heart is butter drizzling gold down her center, to her core. Andy’s tongue catches Jo’s and she’s breathless, dizzy, floating away. The kiss breaks open-mouthed and firm, and this time Jo doesn’t have to look at the sky to see shooting stars.

Stunned and stupid and experiencing _so many things_ , Jo breathes, “Wow.”

Andy laughs softly, pleased with themself, and smiles at Jo without complications. “Yeah?” they ask. Their voice is shy.

Did she mention she was stupid? Of all things that could come out of her mouth in this perfect moment, what Jo says is, “Yeah. That felt so different. It was the first time I’ve ever kissed a--”

And then she stops, realizing what it sounds like she’s almost said, and the silence is awful. The silence is a black hole. The whole moment collapses in on itself, fragile after all, and implodes into the sucking silence.

“Shit,” says Jo. “I’m sorry. I meant--”

Andy’s not looking at her anymore. Andy sheds the sleeping bag, steps away from Jo, and leans on the balcony railing. “It’s okay, you can say it.” Their voice is tight, the side of their face expressionless. They look down at the pavement below like they’re prophesizing falls. “You think of me as a girl. Lots of people probably do. It’s okay.” Andy shrugs like the whole night can just roll of their shoulder.

So Jo has no choice but to tell the truth. “No. Andy? I’m not into girls, so I don’t kiss them. I was going to say--I was going to say it was different, to kiss a person I love.”

Andy turns to face Jo with the speed of disbelief. “Wait. Really?”

“Of course really,” Jo says. Too fast, she adds, “Love like--like the best friends I’ve ever had. Like this band is my whole future wrapped up in three amazing people and I can’t believe my luck, can’t believe that I can reach out and touch you, my entire potential, every possibility wrapped in nice-smelling, tattooed, human skin. Love like too amazing for words.”

“‘ _Human skin_ ’?” Andy mutters.

Jo, blushing harder than Pat the time she spilled a taco down Pete’s shirt, blazes on like she can somehow make this situation better by piling more words on top of it. “I love you like, I don’t know how any guy or family or office job or scholarship or anything can ever compete with it. I love you like I don’t love Mark. Not yet, anyway. Kissing you--I don’t feel _that_ when I kiss Mark. _That_ was like the fucking constellations. Riot Grrrl’s Belt, the Big Dipper, the whole of the known solar system. Like a rollercoaster feels, twisty in your guts, too much but you don’t want it to stop. Like--like Pete’s the fucking poet and I’m a mess who doesn’t do metaphors and forget I said _any of that_.”

Jo is babbling and Andy just has their eyebrow raised, leaning very casually now against the edge of the balcony, looking close and warm and steadier than anyone Jo has ever loved before.

“You usually keep it hidden pretty well? But you really are a mess,” Andy says. Their voice is full with fondness.

Jo’s pretty sure she can’t blush any harder than this and live. Time to shut it down. “Okay, well, science thanks you for your contribution and all, but I’m freezing my tuchus off. Let’s see if the orgy is over in there?”

“So you’re gonna declare wild, intense irreplicable love and then go right into playing it cool?” Andy teases.

“That is my plan, yes,” Jo replies crisply. She opens the sliding glass door. “Shall we?”

Andy leans in and pecks her cheek on their way inside. “Makes your knees go weak, doesn’t it,” Andy murmurs into Jo’s ear as they go.

“The only thing that makes my knees weak is the scientific method!” Jo grouses at Andy’s back.

But they both know it’s not true.


	2. why won’t you let me come over there and do what you want me to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Fall Out Boy's eating out your girlfriend playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/3U6ETXG3JbstftytF6Nghm)

 

Pat doesn’t want to jinx it, but she’s pretty sure tonight’s gonna be the night. She has a whole set of formulas in place to test the Virginity Hypothesis, like: if Girl A wears her worst underwear and ugliest sweatshirt, the sexual adventurousness of Girl B will increase by an average of 65%, whereas if Girl A attempts to flirt and/or seduce, the sexual permissiveness of Girl B will decrease by a full 83%. Girl A consuming alcoholic beverages increases sexual _desire_ by 74% and decreases the odds of sexual _contact_ by 99%, whereas Girl B consuming alcoholic beverages increases both by a solid 58%. (For those of you playing along at home, those odds exceed chance. Putting Pete in the path of alcohol is statistically advisable.) She’s been crunching the numbers, basically. Collecting data. And Pat Stump thinks she’s finally got this experimental paradigm figured out.

The situation is this: Andy is out of the apartment tonight, a fact Pat’s mother is very deliberately not aware of. Jo is in Israel with her family, because Dr. Mrs. Trohman believes that spring break is about _cultural enrichment_ and _heritage_ , not _Cancun_ and _I know what the drinking age is in Mexico, Josephine._ The chances of their being interrupted are approaching zero. Pat is dressed in bleach-stained sweatpants and her Girls Gone Wild t-shirt, which is tight-fitting over the chest and flusters Pete just by existing. It is an outfit carefully selected to put Pete at ease, to make it appear as if Pat isn’t trying anything. (Deception is ethically permissible in research if the results can’t be obtained any other way and you debrief the participants afterwards. Pat plans to debrief the participant as soon as possible, so she figures she’s in the clear.) Patrick’s got on her worst, most comfy bra and underpants that would be too dowdy for her grandmother. Both have been turned a dingey non-color by long stretches of summer tour without access to laundry facilities and a color-indiscriminate approach to laundromats in between. But these unappealing conditions, Pat’s pretty sure, are optimal: a couple months back, Pete’s fingers found sexy, exciting lace beneath Pat’s waistband, and Pete was so horrified she wouldn’t kiss Pat for _days_.

It’s not that Pete is repulsed by the idea of _being with Pat_ , is the thing. That’s what she claims, anyway. That’s what Pat keeps reminding herself. Pete says it’s actually the opposite. The problem is something more complicated and hard for Pete to talk about, something mumbly about respect and taking advantage. If Pat seems too interested in sex—and Pat is _completely, exhaustingly, cannot think about anything else, OBSESSED_ —Pete becomes a human prophylactic. The first time Pat was brave enough to slip a hand under Pete’s shirt, just to stroke her soft, flat tummy, Pete broke their kiss, panting through red shining lips, and started opining loudly about brands of cat litter. Seriously. This is what Pat’s up against here.

Pat is trying so hard to be patient.

Pat is trying so hard not to take all of this as rejection.

Pat is trying so hard to get herself off, remembering how wet Pete was the few times she’s let Pat touch her, remembering the shape of Pete’s mouth around a moan, remembering the inside of a sleeping bag that smelled like Pete’s shampoo and Pete’s warm, living body. She’s pathetic is what she is, because when she’s with Pete she’s so frustrated she feels like screaming. She’ll be humping table legs soon. Pete’s not trying to be a tease—in theory—but what else is going to happen, when Pat’s around the sexiest girl she’s ever seen every day and Pete’s developed a moral allergy to the whole concept of orgasm?

So she listens to their demos on her headphones. She turns up the bass, feels the rumbling vibrations _inside of her_ , and thinks of Pete’s fingers, curling on strings. And she collects data. Thumbs through her statistics textbook. Gets herself off. Concocts a scheme of sexual entrapment.

She doesn’t want to jinx it, but she’s pretty sure tonight’s the night.

 

Pat’s as cozy as possible on the couch when Pete finally, _finally_ gets home from work. Pat took the train into the city, stopped by Jewel Osco for a frozen Home Run Inn and a 6-pack of root beer, and let herself into the little apartment. She’s watching Star Trek Voyager from underneath three blankets. She’s wearing fuzzy socks—Andy’s, she thinks; she found them in the undifferentiated laundry heap in the hallway between the bathroom and the bedroom—and has her hair twisted up in a static-y ponytail. The apartment has the distinct smell of particulates burning off in a dirty, preheating oven. It’s the least sexually enticing tableau she could stage.

It’s fine. She’s just trying to trick her girlfriend into having sex with her. _It’s all fine_.

“I smell like a $5 footlong,” groans Pete by way of greeting. She drops her shoulder bag by the front door and unceremoniously belly-flops onto the couch, onto Pat. There was a time when Pat would have squealed, jabbed her knees up, tried to get away; but she knows by now the only way out of Pete’s boneless, dead-weight snuggle is to submit to it.

“It’s like you conditioned your hair with salami,” Pat says, muffled beneath Pete. “Which, probably a good move for your abused hair. Oily, oily salami.” Even with three layers of blanket and at _least_ two layers of sandwich stink between them, the weight of Pete against her, forehead to toes, is like sinking peacefully to the bottom of the sea. Pat wants to be slowly crushed for all eternity by this girl. Even if she currently smells like the inside of a delicatessen case.

Pete’s been working at Potbelly for exactly nine days, and based on the odors alone, Pat can already tell it’s not going to last. Not that Pete’s jobs ever last. It’s hard enough to find an employer who can accommodate sudden, last-minute tours and weekend nights off for shows; Pete’s working on establishing herself as completely unemployable.

Pete grabs a chunk of her own hair, straightened black-and-red strands thick in her fist, and sniffs it unhappily. It’s getting long, these days, brushing the tops of her shoulders. “Gross,” Pete decides. Her voice is sullen. She pulls an exaggerated pout, as if Pat needed any prompting to stare longingly at her wide, glossed mouth, and asks, “Wash it for me?”

Pat scrambles up off the couch and out from under Pete like the apartment’s on fire. All statistical proofs about the appropriate quantity of displayed eagerness are out the fucking window. Pete Wentz? Degrees of nakedness? Billowing steam and hot water falling across her skin, rolling along faultlines and into hollows she won’t let Pat touch? Getting to dig her fingers deep into Pete’s scalp, yet another secret stretch of that body that no one else can reach? The sounds she might be able to get Pete to make, if she does a good job? Pat’s cool is _completely_ and utterly gone. Pat’s breathing a little hard just thinking of it, becoming overly aware of the sensitive brush of her nipples against her grandmotherly t-shirt bra.

“Is that a yes?” Pete asks, her voice wry.

With studied and unconvincing casualness, Pat raises and drops one shoulder in an elaborate shrug. “If you keep smelling this much like ham, I’ll end up eating you instead of the pizza,” she says. The words are a dare. This is part of the game of sexual chicken they’re playing: who can say lewdest, most suggestive thing with the least expression? Who can make the other blush? Whose cunt aches the hardest? Whose commitment to chastity endures longest? (Pat’s commitment to chastity is a sandcastle at high tide. Just for the record. This is a game she would love to lose.)

Pete doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Would that be such a bad thing?” she asks coolly.

“You tell me,” says Pat. With exaggerated slowness, she licks her lips. Pete looks away, the faintest color blooming on her cheekbones, and Pat has won this round.

Pat hauls Pete off the couch and limps her towards the bathroom. They’re both laughing at how difficult Pete’s boneless act makes this. Pete strips off her work shirt while the water heats up. “I see you watching me in the mirror, perv,” she says fondly, checking the wings of her eyeliner in her reflection. (They’re flawless, as always.)

She’s right: no matter how often Pat gets to see it (which: not nearly enough), the sight of Pete without a shirt on is show-stopping. Once upon a time, Pat would have had to look away, apologizing and blushing. Now she grins lecherously at Pete in the mirror. “Yer the prettiest salami I ever seen,” she leers in her best impression of the kind of creep they unfortunately meet at every show.

“Oh my god.” Pete laughs in horror. Pat advances on her, lurching zombie-like, and Pete ducks under her reaching arms. She kneels by the tub and thrusts her head under the faucet without ceremony.

“You gonna sensually massage my scalp or what?” she asks.

Pat can’t get on her knees fast enough.

Water droplets run down Pete’s spine and into her jeans, wetting her waistband, her underwear. Pat envies their passage. She brings the full force of her strong, callused musician’s fingers to bear on her task, burying her fingers in Pete’s hair and working up a lavender lather. Pete _does_ start to moan, halfway between the sounds of bliss and drowning. She kneels with her head upside down under the spout; water escapes down the nape of her neck. Her bra gets wetter and wetter as water pools and overflows her collarbone. Pat’s mouth is producing saliva at a rate that drastically exceeds baseline. It is taking all her concentration not to actually drool.

It’s understandable, then, how she lapses in her scientific rigor for long enough to bite Pete’s right shoulder blade. It’s just right _there_ , inches from her mouth, shifting and pretty, fragile like a teacup sliding under silk. Pat’s pulled in by tractor beam, her teeth closing gentle around bone before she can stop herself.

Pete makes a little sound in her throat and Pat licks the impression of her own teeth, salt and heat and one stray bead of tap water. “How do I taste?” Pete asks, breathy and just a shade too innocent.

Pat decides she really does want to drown her. She grabs the back of Pete’s neck harder than she needs to and shoves her head all the way under the gushing water. Pete yelps, then garbles her yelp with a mouthful of liquid. “Snitches get stitches, teases get waterboarded,” Pat tells her primly. Then Pete slips free of Pat’s grip and shakes like a dog, whipping Pat with wet hair and an arc of soapy water.

This is basically a declaration of war. The bathroom erupts into violence: the two girls scrabble for each other, slapping aside and trying to capture slick wet arms, shrieking by turn and each attempting to force the other into the tub. Elbows fly through the air and thin wrists flail. Pete’s thighs, soccer strong, give her an advantage even on flooded tile. Slippery, warm, and spreading wet, Pat somehow ends up on her back, pinned against white ceramic, in the tub. Water rises around her ears, her knees tangled up under the spewing tap. It is possible she did not resist as hard as she could have, in her hot splashy propulsion towards this moment, because here is Pete, wet and wearing tight drenched jeans, a tiny, effectively see-through bra, and an ink collar of thorns that seems to drip with gloss. Here is Pete sitting on top of her, holding her wrists pinned under the water, showing her teeth in feral triumph. Their clothes are soaked beyond salvage; they’ll have to take them off. Pat wriggles her hips, unable to resist the pleasure of pressure: Pete’s weight on her pelvis, Pete’s whiskey eyes above, Pete’s ribs knitting open and closed with her exerted breathing. Even eye contact is startling, intense, sending prickling blood all sorts of places, when they are like this. Pete has unlocked more richness in Pat’s heart, on the coat of Pat’s skin, than Pat knew existed in the whole world, let alone her own small life. It’s so good it’s almost unbearable.

“I win,” Pete tells her.

Pat rolls her hips again, shuddering. “Feels like I’m winning,” she says. Pete’s going to kiss her, she feels it in her bones. Pete’s going to kiss her, and then—

And then the shrill triple beep of the oven announces its preheated status, and Pete stands up instead. She turns off the faucet. She drips down on Patrick, who can’t help but stare up at her drenched crotch and imagine what besides bathwater it might drip with.

“Hey! Wait! Come back and finish drowning me,” Pat protests.

“ _To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die_ ,” Pete sings. “Slow down, Spitfire. Let’s make pizza.”

“That is not what I wanna make,” Pat mutters darkly. But Pete leaves her in the tub anyway. According to the predictions of the virginity hypothesis, her odds are fucking toast.

 

They eat pizza wrapped in towels. Pat burns the roof of her mouth on pizza sauce, in keeping with tradition. It’s hard to care: can she even feel pain, when she’s the closest to naked with Pete she’s ever been? No one’s got clothes on under these towels. She knows because she peeked.

Pete keeps leaning on Pat’s bare shoulder, ostensibly in order to drip on her. Pat thinks they both enjoy the contact. She turns her head quick enough to plant a kiss on Pete’s jawline, is gratified by the sharp intake of breath that hisses out of the older girl. Pat feels so desperate, here. Four months, now, she’s been dating Pete. When, _when_ , will she be satiated on these tiny moments? The small scraps of skin, the bared bones, the girl unguarded? When will she cease to be undone? Is there such a thing as too much? At this point Pat is a whole bowl of softly panting cherries, just crying out to be popped.

“My feet are cold,” Pat announces. The  calendar says it’s spring, _technically_ , but it doesn’t feel very springlike in this apartment.

Pete says, “We could get in the bed. You know, to warm up.”

The heavens open up. Golden light streams down. Pat hears angels sing.

The experimental paradigm is about to go live.

 

Soon, they are huddled together in the dying light of the day, nestled into Pete’s blankets. Pat is trembling from the effort of not touching her girl. Pete takes her hands, clasps them to her chest. Pat feels her heart beat, thundering between her breasts, and feels her own heart keen to answer.

“Pan?” Pat asks, invoking the sacred power of Pete’s favorite nickname. She winds her cold toes around Pete’s warm, hard calves.

“Yeah, babe?” From this distance, Pat can see Pete’s lips trembling.

“There’s just this one thing I’ve really been dying to do,” says Pat.

“What’s that?” asks Pete. So guileless, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. God, Pat wants to melt in Pete’s mouth.

“You.”

Pete sighs shaky, her act like Pat’s an inconvenient sex fiend fooling exactly neither of them. Pat knows it’s been a long time for Pete, much longer than usual, without someone else’s touch to help hold her inside her own skin. Pat knows this is a good thing, conceptually. Pat also knows that she is really, _really_ , burning-aching-dying to get fucked.

Pete squints, staring into Pat’s eyes like she’ll find some truth of the universe there. She opens her mouth and Pat knows she’s going to say _no_ , for the hundredth time, and Pat honestly can’t handle much more rejection—

And Pete shrugs one shoulder and says, “Show me.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. Pat slides, slides, slides down Pete’s long, smooth thighs. She spreads Pete’s legs with her shoulders as she goes, her mouth leaving a trail of breadcrumb kisses in case she gets lost down there, and finds herself face-to-face with the place where Pete’s thighs meet. She’s not prepared, and at the same time, she’s spent her whole life preparing. There’s a thicket of dark, obscuring hair, and the dense, humid smell of Pete, butter and spice and something shadowed, hot and nameless. Pat swallows hard. She has no idea what she’s doing, only what’s been done to her that she wasn’t wild about, and the earnest intention to learn through trial-and-error. God, though, she _wants_. She hopes that will be enough. She hopes that Pete’s clit is a merit badge she can earn through earnestness.

“This is okay? If I’m no good—” Pat starts. But just the air from her lips makes Pete’s hips rise off the mattress, Pete’s hands knot up in the sheets.

“You’re good,” Pete tells her. Her eyes glint in the half-light of the setting sun. Pete reaches for her, and Pat offers her hand. Pete takes it by the wrist and guides it to her cunt. “See?” she whispers, pulling Pat’s fingers through damp silk. “You’re already good.”

There’s a throb between her own legs that spurs her forward, up and over every insecurity. _Where we’re going, we won’t need insecurities_ , she says to herself in Doc Brown’s voice. This is a stupid thing to do on the cusp of _actual sex with Pete Wentz_ , but that’s Pat, isn’t it? Stupid, stupid. Her mouth splits in a smile in spite of herself, and it gives her the confidence to spread Pete open with her trembling hand. Every dumb erotica she’s ever read about opening clamshells and finding dewy pearls rolls around her head, because _fuck_ . Organ-red and glisten-pink and fat with pulsing blood is Pete. Pat is out of reservations. Pat is lips and tongue and longing. Pat breathes in deep and lunges with her tongue, suddenly starving. She licks the length of Pete’s pussy, her tongue bursting with the urgent taste, and feels more than hears herself moan, deep into Pete’s interior. She dips her tongue into the deep center of Pete, lapping experimentally, and Pete’s hips twitch, like it’s taking her all to anchor them to the mattress. Her hands float on either side of Pat’s head, stroking her hair lightly, applying no pressure, no force. This is nothing like being with Garrett, Pat doesn’t want to think, because he’s the last thing she wants in her head right now. To distract herself, to banish the thought, she lets herself lick what she’s really been longing for: that bright tight orb, the carefully wrapped heat of Pete’s clit. It’s harder, _fuller_ than she expected. Wetter, too. Somehow sweet. And—pressing back, active, as Pete loses the battle against her hips and moves them, rocking synchronous with Pat’s mouth. (How many weeks has Pat been tonguing air, her hand fisted desperately, rubbing friction-holes in the front of her panties, imagining this? And even with all this practice, even with every eventuality created again and again in her head, there are—surprises.)

Once she’s used to the feel of Pete, burning and urgent in her mouth, Pat turns herself to the task of pleasure. Because she could splash and langor in the foyer of orgiastic delight all night: but that is not her goal here. Her goal, her only goal, really the only thing she wants in this life or any other, is to use her mouth to make Pete come.

So Pat applies herself. She follows the melody of the sounds Pete can no longer help making. Pat’s always been fluent in the language of melody. She plunges her tongue deeper, licks short, fast strokes at the clit, sucks til Pete’s voice rises towards a yell. Then she backs off, licking deep again, introducing her fingers one at a time to the narrow corridor of muscle, the part of Pete that squeezes back. When Pete’s hands, formerly so gentle, make fists of Pat’s hair; when Pete’s nails dig into her skin and she holds onto Pat’s head and bucks, her pelvic bone hitting against Pat’s mouth; when Pete can’t produce words but only _sounds_ , inchoate rising pleas; when Pete’s pussy starts to gush against Pat’s tongue and wets her chin, slicking down her stretched eager neck; when the underside of Pat’s tongue is raw from scraping her own teeth in its fervid flexion. When this happens, Pat knows she’s fulfilled her life’s purpose. She is complete. She has answered the existential question of _why_.

Pete Wentz comes under her tongue, and Pat buries her face deep, not knowing if she wants to laugh or cry.

“Come,” Pete pants, “ _here_.” And she seizes Pat by the hair and half-leads, half-drags her up the bed.

Pat collapses beside her, breathing heavy and feeling her face drip on the pillowcase, showing her teeth and her joy and her utter fucking satisfaction. “I have been dying of wanting to taste you,” Pat tells Pete.

Pete launches herself at Pat, kisses her with sloppy hunger, digs her elbows into Pat’s ribs in effort to weave her body in closer. “I’ve been dying of wanting to taste me on you,” Pete says into her neck. Pat goes ahead and actually dies at that point.

Good thing, too. Because the next thing that happens is Pete grabbing her by the hips with her strong hands, her fingers as nimble as on bass strings, and rolling their bodies so Pat is firmly beneath her. If Pete’s planning to drown her again, maybe in tits this time, Pat is ready and willing to perish. Pete above her is skinny and brown and possessed of truly distracting nipples, and Pat prepares herself to effervesce her way to heaven as Pete stares starving into her eyes and says, with the graveness of a premonition, “My turn.”

And all of Pat’s theories come true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love these girls and I love you. Next Friday: all about Andy.


	3. letting it hurt is my method of coping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is blood.
> 
>  
> 
> [Sweet tunes for kissin' girls to](https://open.spotify.com/user/marvelgirl238/playlist/3U6ETXG3JbstftytF6Nghm)

 

Andy isn’t expecting the blood.

It’s been a long time since they were caught off guard like this, over a toilet, peeling back undies to a slick of thick blood. They’ve bled straight through to their jeans, something that hasn’t happened since junior high. It sounds stupid, at 22, but Andy forgot about periods. Their stomach hurt all afternoon, but they just assumed it was from the dodgy vegan tacos. They haven’t menstruated in months. It just stopped being something they thought about. It was like the universe acknowledging  _ I made a mistake when I made you a girl. _ It was like cosmic reparations.

It was like Andy was too depressed to eat for several months. That’s what it was like. Now their body is storing fat again. Now their body is flexing its biology.

How fitting that it’s blood; it certainly feels like fucking violence.

Blood, dark and staining, thick with the reminder of life. Blood you can’t escape from. Biology that finds you, taunting you with chromosomes more permanent than any Sharpie. The signs and signals everyone else seems to think are so important. Blood that tells Andy,  _ no matter where you to run, I will be here to remind you. _ Their body will always remind them.

 

Andy moved out of their parents’ house like this:

There was nothing to pack, really. Andy had this whole scheme, a black garbage bag, a way to get things out to the car while pretending to take out the trash. Only, when they got to their bedroom and pulled the bag out from under their shirt? There was nothing they wanted to put into it. Some action figures, the few Star Wars toys they’d been allowed to have (‘How about a nice Barbie, hon? She can ride in your little spaceship’), some comics. Papers from school and birthday cards. Family photos with a girl in them. The books on their shelves, once the only portals Andy had to escape through. Andy picked things up and put them down again. There was nothing worth taking. Nothing they wanted to carry over into their new life. After all, most of important things had already been ferreted away to their dorm room and then to Pete’s apartment—the best of the books, their CDs and tapes, their journal, the Patty Schemel drumsticks Pat got them for Christmas. (Jo got them a binder and demanded they  surrender their Ace bandages. Pete filled the entire freezer at the apartment with vegan ice cream, saying, ‘It’s ready for you to move in now. We’ll figure rent out later.’ It is impossible to choose which of these gifts is best.) The other important things had already been thrown away by their mom. Most of the remainder was  _ girl stuff _ . Nail polishes, clothes Andy didn’t choose for themself, a Hanson poster, sensible business pumps. Even the hairbrushes had pink and purple jelly handles. 

None of it could be saved. Andy alone was the salvage from this room. This someone-else’s-life that they had tried so fucking hard to live. Andy stood there, in the bedroom they grew up in—the place they acted out scenes from an ill-fitting girlhood—with an empty garbage bag and nothing, nothing they could carry with them. Nothing that would mean anything. Nothing that would fill this particular void.

Andy wanted to cry. But in this, their body betrayed them again: though they screwed up their face and choked on their breath, willing the bead of sadness to burst its surface tension and overflow, no tears came. Even at the last, there was no significant event with which to mark this moment. This goodbye.

Then their mother appeared in the doorway, as if the universe wanted to say: if there couldn’t be closure, there would damn well be a scar.

“Andy, honey?” their mom said, her brow furrowed in concern. “What are you up to?” Andy looked at their mother’s face, really tried to look at the woman herself and not the years of hurt and resentment and antipathy that usually obscured her. That usually built a wall between Andy and the woman who made them.

Looking at their mother is like looking in a mirror—almost. The same high, lined forehead; the eyebrows that she assures Andy they would have too, if they bothered with a tweezer; the same smooth jaw. The same plush lips. The only thing Andy got from their father was the color brown: his thick chestnut hair, his serious eyes. 

A mirror to who they were supposed to be. A mirror to who they might have been. The living visage of the woman Andy would have been, if Andy was a woman.

It raised questions. Could they could just—go on living the life they’d been born into? If they grew their hair, accepted the jarring violence of  _ she, she, she _ , let their tits and ass get groped and gaped at? If they wore the lipstick and skirts and pantyhose their mother wanted, the soft cream-colored cashmere sweater their mother bought them, if they pierced their ears and flirted shyly and dated Matt—

How hard could it be, really? They’d accepted the yoke of it for years, hadn’t they? Not undamaged, no. Not whole. But they’d borne it. 

Until it become unbearable.

Andy saw themself in their mother’s face, and Andy did not like to look. 

Andy didn’t plan on telling their mother they were leaving. Andy knows two versions of their mother: the dangerous version, they one they’re scared of, the one who gave away their drum kit and really believed this was a kindness, and the one standing before them, the one who made them soup when they were sick and read them bedtime stories, the one whose skirt Andy buried their face in and wept when they were bullied, the one who rubbed Andy’s back and put them together again when they fell apart. It is impossible to reconcile these two mothers. It is impossible to reconcile the person their mother sees and the person they really are. The person they’ve always been.

Andy blurted out, “I’m throwing some things away for you.” And Andy marched to the closet and started ripping down the blouses, the camisoles, the slacks, the dresses their mother had filled it with. The things that were meant to replace what she had taken, what she had thrown away. The things that were meant to corral Andy back into a shape she recognized, a shape Andy had never been. Handful by handful, Andy shoved these articles of coercion into the garbage bag. They were gifts, of course. Gifts for the daughter Andy is not. Gifts for the daughter Andy cannot, will not, be.

With a cry like the textiles were the things precious to her in this situation, Andy’s mother put herself between Andy and the open closet. She tried to wrest the bag away, started pulling sweaters and leggings back out of it again. “Andrea! These are nice things! What on earth is this about?”

Andy hadn’t spent Thanksgiving here. They hadn’t spent Christmas vacation here, either. They’d come on Christmas morning and then left again, retreating to the Trohman household, surfing the couches of friends with kinder families til the clock wound down, til there was no delaying the reality that they hadn’t registered for spring classes, that the new year started tomorrow, that Andy would be a new person in it. That Andy wasn’t coming back to this house or this room, maybe not ever.

“I don’t understand what’s gotten into you!” Andy’s mom scolded, tugging so hard on the garbage bag that it began to tear between them, splitting like poetic justice, spilling garments that didn’t properly belong to either of them onto the bedroom floor. “First you won’t stay in your own house, and I try to be patient with you. Then I get a letter from your university about how dropping below full-time status will affect your financial aid, and meanwhile you’re not saying a word about what’s going on. Now you’re ransacking your closet of all the nice things I got you? Young lady, you are going to  _ tell me what is going on _ !”

Andy’s mom had slapped them before, but nothing ever hit them like the words  _ young lady _ do. Andy dropped the bag like it burned them and stepped back. Always, always moving away from the conflict, away from the danger. Always making themself quiet and small and trying to be easy, trying to avoid the attention, doing themself this small constant damage to avoid the risk of some larger, less controllable pain. “I don’t want this stuff,” Andy said. “Any of it. The clothes, the room, the house,  _ you _ . I don’t belong to you. I’m not coming back.”

“You act like we’re such monsters!” Andy’s mom cried. Unlike Andy, she could produce tears on command. She didn’t have to feel a thing to make her face show it. Andy knew this. Andy had known this for years. Still, it curved into their belly like a hot blade, seeing their mother’s tears. There is no defense against the pain of the person who made you. There never is. “What have we ever done but help you? Twenty-one years of food and shelter—”

“Those are the bare minimum!” Andy yelped back, temper suddenly splashing hot. “You don’t see me, you only see the daughter you want, and when I try to say I’m different you just—you just find new ways to control me! New ways to  _ hurt me _ . I cut my hair, you trash my drum kit. I get a tattoo, you replace all my clothes. Well, you don’t  _ own me _ anymore!”

Andy’s mom’s face emptied of blood. She stood quivering with shock and anger. Andy saw her hands fist on the lip of the garbage bag, but Andy wasn’t afraid anymore. Andy knew there were worse things than physical blows. Perversely, they felt that it would be better if their mother would just hit them. If there were just bruises they could show to other people, broken bones they could explain— _ my parents hurt me because of who I am. They do not understand me, and so they have created wounds _ . Stitches and shattered glass, these are types of inviolable damage you can show others. But that was never the kind of violence Andy’s mother had done.

“I have tried and tried with you,” Andy’s mother hissed through thin, livid lips. “I have given you  _ everything _ . Darrell has taken you in like his own blood, and you have never done a damn thing to respect or repay us. We are not bad parents, Andrea. You are a  _ bad daughter. _ ”

“I am not a daughter,” Andy said. “Yours or anyone’s. I’m not a girl and I’m not a boy.  _ This _ is who I am, Mom.” Andy gestured to their whole self: the shaved head, the muscular tattooed arms, the sports bra-compressed chest, the Fugazi shirt and cozy flannel, the loose-fitting athletic pants. “Can you accept this? Me, as I am? Can you love me?”

It was a last chance. A gunslinger’s standoff at sundown, tumbleweeds at their feet, their palms sweating and their bullets glinting. Who would draw first? Who would commute this moment of suspended tension into sudden, irreversible violence?

“If you want to go, no one’s stopping you,” Andy’s mom spat. “The world’s not like you think, Andrea. You won’t make it alone. You’ll be back.”

Andy should have felt heavy, buckling under the weight of all this. Should have felt crushed by loss. Should have felt the cold bone-dread of fear. But instead, somehow, Andy felt lighter. Andy felt the weight of their girlhood burning off, like fog at sunrise. Andy felt grim, but free. A wild laugh rose in their chest. Out of kindness—and how strange, to feel that they could afford that—they swallowed it.

The last thing Andy said to their mother was, “I won’t be alone.”

 

And those words are prophecy, because just then, they hear the front door to the apartment open. They hear Pete’s familiar, leaping voice. “I’m hoooome! An? You here?”

Andy, paralyzed, stares at the blood like they can divine their future from it. They don’t even have any fucking tampons. Pete probably does, but Andy doesn’t know where. They can’t look; they can’t even get off the toilet, let alone turn to the problem of their underwear, their jeans, their gender, their whole fucking life.

They feel so fucking helpless.

“Hello hello? Anybody home?” Pete calls again, from somewhere nearer the door than last time. A knife of pain throbs through Andy’s cramped guts and they emit a small sound of pain. They could just call out, tell Pete they’re here, ask her for help. But their tongue freezes in their mouth. Red swims before their eyes. They stare into their macabre briefs and feel—scared.

 

The first time Andy got their period was like this:

They were sleeping over at a friend’s house. They were 13 years old. They woke up early in the morning, before the other girls, and their guts were seized up tight and stabbing. Their belly ached and ached. It felt hot and cool between their legs at once. They crawled out of their sleeping bag and discovered their nightgown matted down, slicked to their legs with dark brown blood.

The world warped on its axis. Andy entered a state halfway between panic and surrealism, like they’d been sucked into a Salvador Dalí painting. They crab-walked up the stairs, hunched protectively over their burning belly. They overflowed the sink in the bathroom, trying to wash their nightgown while still wearing it, not understanding that bright, gummy, fresh blood was still coming out of the traitorous slit between their legs. Andy knew about periods, abstractly: somehow it had never been made totally clear to them that this trial would last days, maybe even a full week. They thought of it as kind of a drive-by horrorshow event, like the egging of a house. One monthly, sticky burst, a Halloween prank, and then they could hose off and go back to regularly scheduled programming.

In the end, it was their friend’s mother who explained to them. Investigating the small flood of tap water and diluted blood seeping out from under the bathroom door, she came upon Andy. “Oh, sweetie, is this the first time?” she asked. “That nightgown is just ruined. Let’s throw that away, I’ll get some of Lucie’s pajamas for you to borrow.”

Andy hated the nightgown anyway, was glad to see the last of it. Their mother would be upset, but for god’s sake, waterfalls of blood were wrenching out of Andy’s private parts—they had bigger worries. Lucie’s mom gave Andy a menstrual pad and clean underwear, explained how to pair the two and how often the pad would need changing. 

Andy was a little amazed by the grotesquerie of it all, that women shouldered so stoically: a monthly  _ bloodbath _ , gore in such quantity it had to be soaked up at speed, blood that would bleed til it had emptied itself and not stop a moment sooner. A violent birth of the materials of life. Their hands looked like Hannibal Lecter’s when they was done. They were amazed, and outraged: what a lengthy ordeal this womanhood thing was turning out to be! One monthly reminder they thought they could endure, but  _ days _ of blood? Of bloating and tenderness and confrontational, in-your-face femininity? The breast buds were bad enough. They didn’t know how to deal with  _ this _ , this ruinous red fertility slip’n’slide. They assumed all girls must feel this way, the first time. They assumed they’d get used to it with time. Lucie’s mom made chocolate chip pancakes for all the girls after that, and Andy started to feel a little better.

Bleeding was easy. The hard part was waiting at home. Lucie’s dad dropped them off. They knocked on their own front door like a stranger, waited on the stoop in pajamas that weren’t theirs with their backpack hugged over their belly like a shield. How would they explain this to their mother? Would they get in trouble? And how, without their mother, would they get more pads? She had to be told. God, the thing felt awful between Andy’s legs: foreign and unwanted. It was the first bloom not of Andy’s womanhood, but of their dysphoria, the wrongness and violence of their own, unchosen skin.

Andy’s mother opened the door to admit her daughter to the home. Andy’s courage quailed in their chest, as it traditionally did at the sight of her. “Whose sweatpants are those?” their mother asked immediately, zeroing in like a hawk on any weakness. “Did something happen to your pretty nightgown?”

It was another four months before Andy finally got caught with bloodstains on their sheets. They’d been stealing pads from friends’ houses, stocking up at school vending machines, once even shoplifting a box of tampons from a Walgreens, using wads of toilet paper, throwing out many pairs of soiled panties. They’d been making it work. But the sheets busted them. Andy’s mom assumed it was their first, and Andy let her. “Looks like we’ve got a late bloomer on our hands! I was wondering when this would finally happen,” she said with an air of annoyance, like Andy had timed it deliberately to inconvenience her. Like Andy had chosen their gender assignment out of a specific grudge against bed linens.

Cut to here, now. Cut to Andy with blood in their underpants and Pete outside the door, knocking softly. “An? Are you in there?”

It’s not so hard, after all. Andy opens their mouth and says, “I need help.”

 

Pete doesn’t stop at tampons. She also produces ibuprofen, a heating pad, ginger-magnesium tea, and Attack of the Clones on DVD. She sets Andy up on the couch and forbids them from moving. Ominous sounds emit from the kitchen; Pete returns in time to watch Obi-Wan and Anakin chase a bounty hunter through Coruscant’s nightlife, bearing a bowl of vegan brownie batter. “Vegan means no salmonella eggs,” she announces. “AKA: cooking optional.” There’s so much flour on her clothes, Andy doesn’t want to imagine the state of the kitchen. Pete flops on the sliver of couch not occupied by Andy and pulls Andy’s legs onto her lap. “Want me to rub your feet, babe?” she asks, and that’s it, it’s too much. Andy starts crying like a dam breaking. All their numbness and shock gives way at once, folded up into ugly, messy gratitude.

Pete freezes with a spoon of batter halfway to her mouth. “Oh god,” she says. “I broke you. You never cry.”

Andy laughs in spite of themself, palming tears off their cheeks even as they’re weeping. “You really  _ care _ about me.”

Pete licks her spoon cautiously. “Nah,” she says brightly. “Just wanted an excuse to watch Star Wars and eat chocolate.”

Andy shoves Pete with their feet. Pete being her usual glib self  _ is  _ helping to stem the flow of tears, just a little. Andy’s crying for the kid they were, the daughter they weren’t, the family they lost, the family they found instead. And because their abdomen fucking  _ hurts _ , and the sudden influx of hormones after months of semi-starvation and arrested fertility is wringing them fucking ragged.

“Just—thanks, Pete,” they say. For once, instead of a void in their chest, their heart is full.

Pete pokes Andy in the butt with her spoon. “Of course, dude. Whenever you need me, I’m here.”

“Do you ever feel like you don’t fit in your own skin? That having a body at all is some kind of fundamental betrayal of your spirit?” Andy blurts the question out around a mouthful of brownie. It’s easier to speak, for having cried.

“Oh yeah,” Pete says, nodding with vigor. “I’m like, trying to move through the world and be the best version of me I know how to be, and grow and learn and have a kick-ass band, to love my friends and live to see the future and not be a shitty girlfriend, you know? And everywhere I go, I’m like, slapped in the face instead by the shape of my body or the makeup I’m wearing or what’s on my chest or the color of my skin or whether I’ve decided to straighten my hair. Everybody else’s bullshit turns my whole identity into a—barrier. A limit.” Pete cracks her knuckles one by one. “I feel so limitless, you know? It’s hard not to resent other people, the whole fucking world, for putting limits on me.”

Andy feels this down to the thinnest muscle fibers of their thrumming heart. “You always seem so sure of yourself,” they say.

“You, too,” says Pete.

The silence settles comfortably between them. They’re getting good at being roommates. Hard to fight over 500 square feet when they’ve lived in a van with two other people for weeks on end. They watch lightsaber battles and overacted angst in companionable silence. Bit by bit, Andy experiences a great loosening, the suffering they’ve been holding tight to since the first sight of blood (and maybe much longer than that) starting to flow out of them, the poison moving for the first time away from their heart.

Pete says, “Hey, I know what will cheer you up, Mx. Menarche.”

“You never calling me that again?”

“I found an apartment,” she says.

Andy looks around pointedly, gesturing to the walls around them. “Eureka,” they say.

“No, our next apartment. A three-bed in Roscoe Village.”

“Should I point out that I can’t even pay my half of rent on this one-bed?”

“You’ll get a job,” says Pete, flapping her hand at the problem of money dismissively. Her chipped silver nail polish catches the light. “And in April we’ll get our advance, and by June Jo and Pat will be ready to move in—”

“Advance? What advance?” 

Pete grins slow and Cheshire. “Why, the advance for our album,” she announces, clearly savoring each word. “I talked to the people from Fueled by Ramen today. They liked our demos, An. Really liked them. We’re getting signed.”

The pain in their abdomen, their life, is, for the moment, forgotten. Andy springs to their feet, hale and spry and not caring that they nearly topple Pete off the couch as they go. “SIGNED TO A  _ LABEL _ ?” they holler. “PETE! NEXT TIME, LEAD WITH THAT!”

Pete throws her arms around Andy’s neck and they jump up and down, making enemies of their downstairs neighbor now that they’ll be moving away. They shriek and dance and laugh, and if maybe there are some tears thrown into the fray too, well, who’s counting? Together they glow, a closed circuit of excited starlight, and after a while Pete hands Andy her cell phone. “I haven’t told Jo or Pat yet,” Pete says. “I thought you could do the honors?”

And it’s a good day in the life of Andy Hurley, overall. Bloody or not. Here, with these girls, in this city, Andy has a future. For the first time, Andy has a home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS, thank you so much for reading this! I had the best time writing this for Femslash February. This last story in particular GOT TO ME, because I thought the whole time I was writing a story about first periods but then it actually turned out, when I got to the end, that it was a story about first _homes_.
> 
> Girl Out Boy will return.

**Author's Note:**

> Tune in next Friday for very specific information about the APA Ethics Code juxtaposed with girlsmut!


End file.
